Barney the dog roused himself as he always did when his owner's car pulled into the driveway. Barney stood up on the bed and shook himself and jumped down carefully. When James opened the back door Barney was standing there with his tail wagging and a dutifully happy look on his face. It was one A.M.
``You want out, Barney?''
Of course he did. The night beckoned. First he patrolled the yard. Sniffing out alien urine deposits. Listening for cats, rats, gophers, raccoons and possums. He took a long drink from a puddle. So much better than the water in his dish. He looked up and down the road. Nothing moved. Sniffing carefully all the way he moved into new territory. The house next door. Nothing. He moved on through the scattering of houses. Nothing.
Then he smelled something. Not much, but worth some investigation. A plastic box on a back step. He picked up the plastic box in his teeth and hurried home, using his special trot. Short and high stepping with his tail in the flag waving position.
In the safety of his own yard he attempted to open the box. He had not mastered the tupperware concept but nevertheless he got the lid off with little damage. Inside the box there was a package of fat free ham sandwich slices. Barney tore through the tough plastic in no time and consumed the rubbery, saltily flavorless substance. Under the ham package was another one. Fat free American cheese food slices. Individually wrapped. Not particularly inviting. He got the outer wrapping off and then discovered to his disgust that he had yet another layer of impervious plastic between him and satisfaction. The only way to eat the stuff was with the wrapper on, and he got through a couple that way before he lost enthusiasm. He picked up a half dozen slices in his mouth and trotted to the door and scraped with his paw.
James dragged himself from exhausted sleep and let the dog in without really opening his eyes. In the morning he was surprised to see individually wrapped cheese slices distributed about the house. A trail of them from the kitchen.
``Did you do this?'' he asked Barney.
Of course he did.
James sat in the kitchen and peeled the wrapping off the slices and fed them to Barney. As it grew light he saw the plastic box and shredded plastic in the yard. It was raining.
``Barney you're going to get shot,'' he said.
A few houses down a woman named Clara stepped outside to get the box of ham and cheese she had bought to make sandwiches for the church convention. People were coming from all over. She'd promised twenty ham and cheese sandwiches and the box was gone. She'd put it out there because their small frig was full of her husband's beer and she figured the stuff would stay cool. She knew it wasn't worth the argument to put his precious beer outside. Now the ham and cheese was gone and she had to be at work in an hour and drop the sandwiches off at lunch.
``That's it,'' she said. ``That's it.''
She went into the bedroom where her husband lay snoring and sweating in his underwear.
``I want a divorce!'' she said.